


(Can’t) Breathe

by Laylah



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Community: fictunes, F/M, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-13
Updated: 2008-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 13:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Wait</i>, she says, in the dreams she’s been having since the train. <i>Don’t go. Don’t leave like this, not yet.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	(Can’t) Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Podfic read by Rhea available here: http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/cant-breathe

Chane’s dreams are full of words. Everything she can’t say, everything that stops thick and heavy in her throat and won’t rise to her mouth when she wakes—all those words spill from her mouth in her dreams. She hears the sound of her own voice, and she wakes in the dark with her own words still ringing in her ears.

 _Wait_ , she says, in the dreams she’s been having since the train. _Don’t go. Don’t leave like this, not yet. Tell me why you asked me that._

Tell me your name.

It’s only after she wakes that she fills in the other senses, the rest of the scene: the bite of the chill air against her skin, the heavy scent of coal smoke and the sharpness of blood. His face, so streaked with red that she could barely see his skin beneath, and his smile as sharp as her knives.

Her father tells her, just at the edges of her vision, that she deludes herself. That it was a chance encounter, no more, and she will not see him again. For the first time she can remember, Chane doesn’t answer him.

When the package arrives to the house she’s sharing with the Chicago gang, nobody knows what to make of it. _For Chane_ , the careful block letters on the brown paper say, _From Rail Tracer_. Jacuzzi goes into hysterics, sobs in panic, all the while insisting that he’s not. Nick and Donny fold their arms and do their best to look more menacing than nervous. Even Nice watches her with the worried expression that Chane has decided is probably sisterly.

Then she opens the package.

The white dress is elegant, lace-trimmed, fancier than anything she chooses for herself. It fits better than it has any right to, and she barely knows herself in the mirror. She studies her reflection, trying to imagine the role that goes with it.

That night she dreams of him here, in Manhattan; he leaps from roof to roof and lands beside gargoyles, nearly as fantastic as they are. Everything in the dream is smoke gray and coal black, save for him, and he is so bright a scarlet it steals the breath from her lungs. She’s wearing the dress he sent her.

 _Why?_ she asks, white taffeta caught up in both her hands as she gathers her courage to spring after him. _Why this? What do you see in me?_

In her dreams, she is the only one who can speak.

A few days later there’s a note, in the same spare printing, with an address and a time. Nice asks her what’s in it, but Chane tucks the note away, shuts herself in her room and paces. Her father’s voice warns her to be careful, reminds her how dangerous strangers are.

She puts on the white dress anyway, shows the note to the driver of the cab she flags down. The flowing skirts hide the line of her knife strapped to her thigh. Did he think of that when he chose it?

Manhattan still makes no sense to her, too big and too busy. Chane wonders if she’ll ever know these streets well enough to find her way alone. Her throat feels tight even though she isn’t trying to speak, and her palms are damp. When she closes her eyes she remembers the way he moved, the ring of steel under her feet as he landed on the roof of the train.

The address is a brownstone across the street from a club called Coraggioso. She shouldn’t be so unsettled. The mission on the _Pussyfoot_ didn’t make her this nervous, and she was expecting real trouble then.

She takes the stairs slowly; her limbs tremble, don’t want to obey her. The questions bubble up in her throat for all that she _knows_ she won’t be able to voice them. She raises her hand to knock—

And he opens the door before she can. Without the blood, the shape of his face changes completely. Only his eyes are the same, his eyes and his dizzying, confident smile. He’s beautiful. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says. “Will you come in?”

The words won’t come, but Chane nods.


End file.
